


Entombed

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: M/M, Not A Fix-It, Romantic Angst, Suicide, Unless You Count Dying Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20686358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: This is where he belongs. It's not fair to ask him to leave, when he's already dead.





	Entombed

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, mind the tags, please do not read this if it's going to be too upsetting!

“Richie…” A hand lands on his shoulder and he shudders violently, but his protests die off. 

Eddie is gone. Eddie was still breathing when he’d left him to kill that fucking clown, and now he’s gone. He’d died, alone, in the dark. Richie had let him die alone. 

“We can’t leave him here.” He repeats, in a broken sob. 

“We’ve got to _ move_.” Bill takes his arm, tries to get him up, and this time it’s not just a tic, Richie throws him off with purpose.

“OH, FUCK YOU!” He screams, clutching Eddie’s limp form to his chest. “FUCK YOU!”

The memories flood back, Eddie’s broken arm, the fight they’d had because Eddie could have died, Eddie almost died, and no one was taking that _ seriously _ enough, only Richie, and Richie couldn’t lose the most important person in his world, _ Eddie_, so small and so brave and so hurt and he knew he’d be taken away from him and everything had _ hurt _ so much… everything had hurt so _ much_. 

And now it’s real. Now it’s real and Eddie is--

Now it’s real and Eddie--

Richie curls over him, head against the curve of Eddie’s neck. He smells like soap and filth and blood, and now that the sobbing has started in earnest he can’t stop, he can’t stop, and the whole house is shaking around them, but he doesn’t care-- no, that’s not right. He cares, just… not the way they want him to.

“Maybe we can move him.” Mike says, rubbing at Richie’s back. “Maybe we can bring him up. Bev, come take Richie-- Bill, help me carry Eddie, all right? We can…”

He doesn’t know how to tell them, he doesn’t know how to say any of it, but he knows one thing, that Eddie is his to carry, and he shakes Mike and Bill off, struggles to his feet with Eddie in his arms, feels like the poster for Forbidden Planet, only a lot fucking sadder. 

“Here, let us help--” Ben starts, but whatever he sees in Richie’s face stops him. “Rich…”

“Just go.” He shakes his head. “Just go-- clear the way. We’ll be right behind you.”

They might not be easy with that, but he doesn’t allow for an argument. He simply lets himself fall behind, simply refuses to surrender Eddie, simply leaves them with a choice he knows is unfair, as he sinks to his knees and cradles Eddie in his lap, close to his chest. 

“Just go.” He repeats, shaking his head. “I-- I think I… belong here.”

“Richie, that’s _ insane_.” Bev doubles back to grab his arm. “Honey, please--”

“Eddie didn’t die for you to give up now.” Ben adds.

_ So when do I give up_? He wants to ask, to scream at them all. _ If not now, when_?

In a day, in a week? He’d seen it all in the deadlights. He knows he doesn’t survive this. But he won’t go the way he saw himself going, can’t bear to. It wouldn’t be fair to the hotel maid who’d have found him, for starters. More importantly, this is the one way they get to be together, and that’s how it’s supposed to be. Don’t they understand, can’t they understand? If they drag him out of this house, he’ll only be a walking corpse anyway, and he’ll only be desperate to rest. He can’t live with the version of himself that would leave Eddie behind now. He doesn’t want to be buried without him.

“We don’t have time to f-_fight _ about this now.” Bill reaches for him, too, but Richie is a stone, he won’t be moved, and they have to know they can’t carry him out.

“No, you don’t, so-- so get the fuck out.” He sniffs, makes a rather pitiful attempt at one last Voice. “Go on, get. Can’t you see I don’t wancha anymore?”

“Richie, fucking-- We’ve lost two friends already, will you _ please _\--”

“You haven’t lost what I lost!” Richie screams, jerking away from the hands reaching for his arms, trying to pry him away from Eddie. “None of you-- You all have your _ lives_, you all… you all have plans and people, and all I have is the same fucking _ hole _ in my life I’ve had for twenty-seven _ years_. Only now I know what I’m missing. I’m not leaving him alone, it’s dark. It’s dark and he’s-- he shouldn’t-- he shouldn’t be alone, not here. He hates this place.”

His voice breaks, midway through his tirade, coming out in a watery whimper instead of with righteous fury. Twenty-seven years where his life has been on-hold, where he couldn’t write his own material because he wasn’t a real person, because the parts of him that were real were missing, and the parts he could guess at were scary, and he’s never been able to so much as kiss someone without shaking to pieces and gagging on a half-remembered secret. Couldn’t bring himself to taste the experiences he’d bragged about so loudly, because he was broken, because he felt wrong, because there was a beautiful boy he’d never stopped loving and it took coming back to this fucking town to remember him, and he doesn’t know what he’s sorry for and what he isn’t, but he doesn’t know how many more years he could have dragged through the neurotic mess that was his life, the missing memories and the lies, if he hadn’t come home and remembered.

“Richie, _ please_. Eddie-die w-w-wouldn’t wa-want--”

“Oh, fuck you. Fuck you very much. I know what Eddie wants, and guess what, it doesn’t _ matter_, because we died here anyway. Why don’t you just go?”

“Richie--”

“I know what I said.” He whispers. 

Something, somewhere, crumbles. The house is collapsing. Richie thinks of House of Usher, has the sudden memory of one of those old-timey double bills, a couple of Vincent Price pictures on a Saturday afternoon, of Eddie’s hand closing over his arm every time something scary happened, the way he’d felt ten feet tall, and the swooping feeling in his stomach, and how he’d gallantly paid for the popcorn and tilted the carton over towards Eddie every so often, as they sat in the dark, and how Eddie hadn’t once complained about where Richie’s hands had been, and how they had shared a drink as well, two straws jammed into the coke, but they hadn’t really kept track of which straw was which, and he’d _ felt _ things, he’d felt things so raw and so real…

No adult joy could compare to the thrill of that hand stealing into his, as Eddie whined that he _ hated _ horror movies and yet he would watch every single one at Richie’s side. No adult fear could compare to the feeling in the pit of his stomach as they sat in the flickering light of the Aladdin watching monsters of all shapes, and he understood for the first time that the real monster was the thing sitting on his heart, hungry and greedy and wrong.

But then, no childhood grief had ever touched the feeling of losing him now.

A beam comes down. Someone screams. The others are forced out, dragging each other and themselves. He has to hand it to them, they don’t stop screaming for him to come with them. Still… they have to know. They have to know he won’t.

As the voices grow quieter and the creaking of the house grows louder, Richie carefully lays Eddie out, and lays over him, using his body to shield him from the debris raining down.

“It’s okay, baby.” He murmurs, his nose against Eddie’s cheek, his fingertips skating along his jaw. “Babe, it’s okay now, it’s us. It’s us. I’m not afraid anymore, Eds, not as long as I’m with you. You were always the brave one, I was just loud, but… aw, man, now? It’s just you and me… that’s what it was supposed to be.”

He kisses him, gentle. Over his unmarred cheek, and then over the bandage on the other one. Over his slack, still lips, as brief and chaste as any childhood first kiss might have gone. He may be crazy, he reasons, but he’s not sick-- there’s a line somewhere.

“Just promise me we’re going to the same place, huh? Ask ‘em to let me in when I get there. Eddie, my love… hold on just a little longer for me, babe, I’m coming. I promise, okay? Okay, you’re not alone. You’ll never be alone again, ‘cause I’m right here with you. Shh, shh... I don’t really mind how much you love me… a little is all right…”

A chunk of the ceiling traps their legs together, and he hunches his shoulders. The pain feels distant, numbed. Like his body only exists where they touch, and he rests their foreheads together, and waits. For the floor to drop out from under them, for the rest of the ceiling to come down… He holds tight to Eddie’s body, so that whatever happens, they can’t be separated. He sings, soft and shaky and low, until the house falls in around them. Together.


End file.
